Revising GURPS Magic

[benz72]

General Comment:

I'd like to see move varied spell effects based on caster attributes/advantages/skills.

I'm thinking about things like:
'Magical ST = (Thaumatology Skill + Magery)/2'
'Magical DX = (IQ + Spell Skill)/2'
'Magical IQ = IQ + Magery'
'Magical HT = Will'

These scores could be used to do things like calculate how much Apportation could lift per FP or how fast an Illusion can move. Putting a variable or two into the spell description adds a lot of flexibility and flavor in my mind. I admit it also adds complexity, but not really moreso than when the Warrior gets a new weapon and has to calculate out all the attack modes and damage scores.
It would help make casters, and the results of their spells, unique and add credence to the idea that someone can 'read the signature of Joe the Inflammable' in this spell.

[scc]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

I don't have a problem with Essential Earth losing its magical properties if dispelled by a Dispel Magic. As for the Zombie spell, it doesn't have a "Permanent" duration, but "The zombie remains animated until destroyed." (M151), which I read as "Dispel Magic won't work on them". And Fragile (Unnatural) just means that they will be destroyed if they are reduced to -HP - nothing to do with magic-dependency (B137).

Except that Essential Earth can be used to make adamant and orichalcum, or near enough anyway, and while such metals disappearing in a No Mana Zone may make sense, Dispel Magic destroying them doesn't. And the zombie template would have to have something about the zombie being destroyed by the Dispel Magic spell for it to be valid

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by scc

Except that Essential Earth can be used to make adamant and orichalcum, or near enough anyway, and while such metals disappearing in a No Mana Zone may make sense, Dispel Magic destroying them doesn't. And the zombie template would have to have something about the zombie being destroyed by the Dispel Magic spell for it to be valid

Essential Earth as a truly permanent thing ought to cost a lot more than it does.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Food

Test Food: I am never quite sure if alcohol counts as “poison” for the purpose of this spell or not.

Yes, it does. You need to specifically exclude it from your test, the same way you need to exclude the termite colony and those three emergency rations in the thief's backpack from Seek Food.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by benz72

I agree but I'm a bit hesitant to go around doubling the costs of blocking spells since they do not benefit from reduced casting costs for high skill.
An admittedly bookkeeping intensive solution is to add a casting penalty for each prerequisite the defender does not know. (-4 to Ward a Fireball if you don't know any fire spells or -6 to Ward against Sleep if you don't know any Mind spells).
There is also the question of how, game mechanically, a defender knows what is going on... It is pretty obvious what that guys swinging a sword in your vicinity is doing, but I'm not sure what RAW rolls are supposed to be made for a potential defender to even know about the spell being cast.

What one GM permitted my one wizard character to do is to have an Improved Counterspelling Perk, specialized by spell college, which enables Counterspell, Ward, and similar "uh, nope!" spells to work against all spells of the selected college. The prereqs for the perk were "six spells in the given college", which made sense; you need slightly more than a passing knowledge of the college to be able to adapt to spells in the college you don't yet know.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by benz72

I wouldn't... Just make them techniques to Thaumatology that apply to 'the way all spells are cast' rather than techniques to individual spells.

That seems rather cheap.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

What one GM permitted my one wizard character to do is to have an Improved Counterspelling Perk, specialized by spell college, which enables Counterspell, Ward, and similar "uh, nope!" spells to work against all spells of the selected college. The prereqs for the perk were "six spells in the given college", which made sense; you need slightly more than a passing knowledge of the college to be able to adapt to spells in the college you don't yet know.

Okay, that sounds like a good solution, one that I will think I will use as well.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Mind Control

Wisdom: As with the Might/Grace/Vigor enchantments, I will limit the “always on” variety to a maximum of +1 IQ, and add a “jewelry or article of clothing” variant that would allow the wearer to activate the spell on themselves for the usual energy cost. Though come to think of it, maybe the former is redundant if we combine the latter with the Power enchantment…

Movement

Levitation: If the caster levitates himself, can he still use Dodge? Personally, I think calculating the caster’s Dodge as if his Basic Speed was capped at 3 makes sense, since he is moving slower than usual. “Dodge and Drop” is possible at the caster’s unmodified Dodge (plus the usual +3), but it requires the caster to cancel the Levitate, which costs 1 energy (plus possibly falling damage).

Wallwalker: I don’t see why this spell should be more expensive than Levitation - it costs 1 energy per 50 pounds of the affected person, as opposed to 1 energy for 80 points for Levitation. Yes, it has some advantages when compared to Levitation, such as a possible higher movement rate, but not that many. I would change that to 1 energy per 100 pounds of the affected person. Also, the -2 penalty to fighting while using Wallwalker can be bought off for individual combat skills as a Hard Technique.

Lockmaster: I am somewhat leery of a spell that pretty much makes a mundane skill redundant. I think a better solution would be to give +5 to the caster’s Lockpicking skill (using the caster’s default skill value if necessary) - this spell will be useful for opening locks, but actual knowledge of how locks work will still be helpful.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by scc

Except that Essential Earth can be used to make adamant and orichalcum, or near enough anyway, and while such metals disappearing in a No Mana Zone may make sense, Dispel Magic destroying them doesn't.

G:Magic says Essential Stone and Essential Metal are "similar to" Adamant and Orichalcum. Given how much cheaper the spell created stuff will be than a "legendary" material or alloy, I have no problem with them being subject to Dispel Magic.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Necromancy

Steal Energy: Should probably be split up into a Steal Energy (for Energy Reserves) and Steal Fatigue (for actual Fatigue), analogous to Lend Energy.

Zombie: One thing that never sat right with me is that most corpses are fairly useless for zombiefying if you want some undead fodder for your armies, since most people will not have any actual attack skills. Since zombies (and skeletons) are Hateful Necromantic Abominations, I see nothing wrong with giving them a Brawling skill equal to their DX if they don’t have the skill already. This will still make them not much of a danger to the average adventurer, but at least they won’t be totally pointless. Also, GMs should probably have “standard zombie/skeleton” stats at hand which they can hand to PC necromancers so that they don’t have to figure out undead stats all the time.

Also, there should be a “Dread Zombie/Skeleton” variant of this spell that gives them some significant stat boosts - not something you’d waste on ordinary cannon fodder, but if you do have a corpse of a mighty warrior (or adventurer) at hand it would be a shame not to do something more interesting with them. How does a base energy cost of 30 in exchange for +3 ST, +2 HP and +2 DR sound? Obviously, these should have a noticeably “dread aura” that distinguishes them from ordinary zombies.

Summon Demon: If this spell is likely to be used in the campaign - especially if it is used by PCs - the GM should probably have a ready-made list of demons that can be summoned, including the energy cost to summon them. The GURPS Repository lists a bunch of ready-made demons, but sadly most of these don’t come with summoning costs - does anyone want to spend some time and calculate them?

Banish: It seems that in a way banishing a demon is more difficult than summoning one, since when you summon a demon you probably have a fair idea of the energy cost involved… but you might not know it when you are banishing one. It’s probably fair if a roll on Hidden Lore: Demon allows the caster to guess the approximate energy cost for a particular case…

Bind Spirit: This spell is very expensive, and any summoner planning to use it will have to get a massive source of energy from somewhere. This likely will require ceremonial casting with lots of assistants…

[scc]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Zombie: One thing that never sat right with me is that most corpses are fairly useless for zombiefying if you want some undead fodder for your armies, since most people will not have any actual attack skills. Since zombies (and skeletons) are Hateful Necromantic Abominations, I see nothing wrong with giving them a Brawling skill equal to their DX if they don’t have the skill already. This will still make them not much of a danger to the average adventurer, but at least they won’t be totally pointless. Also, GMs should probably have “standard zombie/skeleton” stats at hand which they can hand to PC necromancers so that they don’t have to figure out undead stats all the time.

Also, there should be a “Dread Zombie/Skeleton” variant of this spell that gives them some significant stat boosts - not something you’d waste on ordinary cannon fodder, but if you do have a corpse of a mighty warrior (or adventurer) at hand it would be a shame not to do something more interesting with them. How does a base energy cost of 30 in exchange for +3 ST, +2 HP and +2 DR sound? Obviously, these should have a noticeably “dread aura” that distinguishes them from ordinary zombies.

I think the Reprogrammable trait on the Zombie Templates actually covers both of these, particularly the first